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You are in the CarrTracks website Picture Gallery. Picture Gallery of Southern Pacific Railroad and
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This is the largest section in the CarrTracks Picture Gallery. It has 138 pages and
356 pictures.
For this series we will follow Southern Pacific trackage from Bakersfield southeast over the Tehachapi Mountains to Mojave. The SP pushed the line down the San Joaquin Valley in 1874 and began building over the Tehachapi in 1875. Tunnels were the biggest holdup for construction. The longest of the 18 tunnels on the stretch between Bakersfield and Tehachapi was 1,156ft and wasn't completed until March 1876. At the same time crews were building northward from Los Angeles. The longest tunnel was 6,966ft and it wasn't opened until July 1876. The two lines met at Lang in Soledad Canyon in September 1876. The Southern Pacific then had a line connecting central California with Los Angeles. In 1882, the SP started building a line to Needles to headoff the Atlantic & Pacific. This was completed in 1883. The main objective was to keep competitors out of California. Through some horse trading the line to Needles became part of the Santa Fe. In 1899, the Santa Fe secured trackage rights over the Southern Pacific between Mojave and Bakersfield. All pictures in this series are on disks 40 through 48. You can purchase a disk and printout any of the pictures for your own use to dress up your train room or add color to a house that just cries out for more train pictures.
Kern Jct (Bakersfield) |
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